steel stud walls -- do they need insulation?

[johntimber]

Hi,

The walls in my basement rooms aren't up yet, so there's time to tweak the design, if necessary. I'm planning on putting up steel stud walls with 1/2" drywall on either side, leaving empty cavities everywhere except for the walls that actually border my existing basement walls (which have windows) where I planned on using typical R13 insulation. Since I'm building a room-within-a-room, I didn't see the need for insulation in the other walls for climate-control purposes. The bulk of the basement stays at a fairly steady temperature year-round (naturally cool in summer, heated by our gigantic steam boiler in winter).My question is whether or not the air space I was planning on leaving in the remaining walls will act to reduce sound transmission to the rest of the house as well or worse than using insulation. And if insulation is the way to go, which kind? I seem to remember reading somewhere that steel stud walls with 1/2" drywall on either side did as good job of reducing sound transmission as almost any other treatment. But then again, if I did read that info somewhere, it was a long, long time ago...Also, do I need to worry about what goes in the cavities where the acoustics *within* the room are concerned? Since I'm building the room as an isosceles trapezoid, I was assuming that the non-parallel side walls would do more to help the room's acoustics than doing anything special with regard to the wall cavities.

Please help.

I didn't find the right solution from the Internet.

References:-
Acoustics Forum • View topic - steel stud walls -- do they need insulation?
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Thanks!

[dirtdobber]

Here in the south internal walls are typically not insulated for climate control purposes, where the internal walls are just partitions within a larger space of climate controlled environment. As far as sound transmission, I have insulated partition walls (such as bedroom) in an effort to dampen sound. Not sure if actually helps, but I did it. It sounds like you are more concerned about acoustics inside the new room based on the shape?

[Dw89xj]

I've always been told dead air space, like a gas filled window, is the best insulation. But when I was helping hud and redevelopment authority some things we insulated for noise control.